Things started out rough when we were supposed to meet at the bus station at 8am and when I arrived at 7:55, I realized I didn't have my passport or even my passport copy, thus making me unable to go! Bah! Luckily, I only live about 5 blocks away from the station so I was allowed to literally sprint back to the apartment and fetch my passport (and later my camera, which I also forgot- I am the worst tourist ever). I barely made it back to the bus by 8:17, only 5 minutes or so after the departure time, with only some trouble breathing and an embarrassing walk of shame down the bus aisle upon my return. (It actually worked out in our favor because some poor kid didn't set his alarm and barely made it sprinting to the bus at a stop light to hop on, so if I wasn't an idiot he would never have been able to go! Ah fate.) The bus ride was fine, about 5 hours with a short stop somewhere along the way, I honestly had no idea where, and then we arrived to a very rainy and kind of gross Madrid! It was HUGE but still had all the old skool charm of European cities so I was instantly happy to be there. Immediately we checked into the hotels, had lunch, then were whisked away for a bus tour of the major city sights like the government buildings, Palacio Real, Plaza Mayor, etc. That afternoon we had some free time so we decided to visit the Reina Sofia and see some modern art and the Guernica mural by Picasso because we had seen it in the actual city of Guernica so it only made sense. It was alright, not my favorite but the Dalis were pretty wicked.
The next day, Saturday, we got up early and departed around 10 for Segovia, a little city about an hour outside of Madrid. It was so beautiful just driving there because we went though snowy mountains, grassy plains, sunny deserts- it was like watching Planet Earth from inside the bus!
Once we got there we started walking around the city until we came upon my new favorite sightseeing place in the world, THE AQUEDUCT. It was so much bigger than I expected and at the same time, so much smaller and more accessible to the people of the city. It didn't look a day over 2000 years old and when I finally ran up to it and hugged it/held back my tears of shear excitement, joy, and awe, I realized that it epitomized why I love history so much, and now Spain just as much.
It all got better when we went to a real castle (Alcazar) that connected to the aqueduct system and I got to stand on the top tower and see literally all of Spain at my feet. Ah I love Spain and history and the combo of them both was just overwhelming! If chorizo had been present I would have died on the spot, like my camera did from sheer beauty-overload. And a dead battery.
When we returned to Madrid for the afternoon Linden and I visited an Egyptian temple that was donated by Egypt to Spain for its help in moving the pyramids and temples away from the Nile after building a new dam. It was funny because it looked so familiar and then I realized I had seen one of its two brothers in the Met in NYC several times already! What a small world. :) Then the epic night of Madrid-outings began. It started with getting locked out of our room because somehow the lock jammed and permanently locked our door from the inside so we had to get the manager every time we wanted to go into our room, bah what a pain. Then, we decided late to go out and about and literally ending up running to the metro before it closed at 1:30am to catch the last train, only to have two girls force their way into our swipes and almost get Linden sent to jail by security. Oh boy we barely talked/paid our way out of that one, only to then get caught in one of the busiest metros I've ever seen! The entire car (and every car) was so packed they had to stop the train and force people out because it was too heavy. Then, when we suddenly realized it was our stop, we struggled to push ourselves through the crowds to exit the car when the doors squished me like a bug and did NOT budge. Between sounds of gasps and "Oh Dios mio" from the rest of the passengers, I was finally PULLED out but poor Linden was stuck on board, so she had to get off later and take a cab to our stop! Ridiculous, and we haven't even GONE out yet. To top it all off, the bars all closed at 2 (it was 2:15 at this point) so we were without bars to bar-hop to, and when we finally found a bar/discoteca that would take us, we got kicked out because those SAME GIRLS brought in outside booze and got the whole party ejected. MADRID PARTY FAIL. Needless to say, we attempted to look for another bar fruitlessly (although we did find the gay-hangout of Madrid and one girl in our party saw her first transvestite, not a complete fail!) so we headed home around 3am.
Our wake-up call was at 7:45am so that was unfortunate, especially given the exciting night before, but it was fine because everyone else seemed to have equally awesome/late nights (some went to Capital, the 7-story discoteca, and returned at 7AM!!) so we were all in the same boat. We left for the Museo del Prado and it was probs my second favorite part of Madrid- I had no idea how many famous paintings were there! What a great surprise for me! It was beautiful and tiring but we finally made it to a quick lunch at the hotel and then the 5-hour bus ride back to Bilbao, where everyone slept peacefully on the bus.
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